A “Safe Case” for Photographic Gears

I am sure photography buffs will agree with me when I say we have simply too many gears for our little hobby….

It is not enough to just shoot one camera body. No. No way….We photography buffs will only be contended with multiple bodies. A main workhorse body + a backup body + a body for street shoot + a body for hiking + a body for fun shooting…the list goes on. Sounds familiar? Then we are also never contended with the lenses we have. From tele zoom to super zoom to macro to prime lenses. One can never have enough. Add accessories like flash guns and filters and battery grips, suddenly we have a little photography workshop to manage.

Storage Options

I usually just store all these gears in a cabinet when they are not in used. But I am a disorganized person. Quickly that cabinet becomes messy, and I lose things I should have stowed away. And many a times I needed to transport my gears and I have been doing that by packing my gears into multiple camera bags. So I thought I should find a better way to store my gears and at the same time allowing for safe transport easily.

Then I googled that some photographers have been packing their stuff in Pelican cases and because Pelican cases cost more, some enterprising photographers have been using cheaper Pelican knock-offs such as the Kincrome case or the CraftRight case.

AusPhotography forum has an interesting thread about the CraftRight case. It is a fairly old thread but that thread sold me. So I went shopping at Bunnings this morning.

CraftRight Case

So this is the case that I bought. In fact I bought 3 for my gears. Each case cost me A$40. Yes. Photographers are hopeless.

The case comes shrink wrapped.

And the case has very well made foams for protection of equipment. I like how the top lid has a built-in foam already.

There is a top layer foam which is essentially what they called a “pick and pluck” foam.

And then there is a bottom layer foam which is not the “pick and pluck” type.

And this is how I have arranged my gears.

First, some big lenses. I have my Tamron 70-200/f2.8 on the far right. Then I have the Sigma 105/f2.8 Macro on the middle row top and a Sigma 17-70/f2.8-4.5 on the middle row bottom. To the far left, I have the Pentax DA 18-135 on top and the Pentax DA14/f2.8 on the bottom. I figured I can still take in 1 lenses in this case.

Next, my camera bodies. The photo below is probably under exposed a bit. I just take a quick shot using my PnS without paying attention to how this will turn out.

The top left is my Pentax K-01, followed by my wife’s Pentax K-30 and lastly my Pentax K-7 with battery grip to the right.

At the bottom, I have 4 Pentax limited lenses. The Pentax DA15, DA21, DA35 Ltd Macro and the DA70. I have room for one more limited lens in this case 🙂

And lastly this is the 3rd case for the accessories. I have my Metz 48 flash to the far left, a Pentax 360FTZ flash to its right and a small Metz flash for my Pentax K-01.

At the bottom row I have my wife’s Sigma EM-140 DG Macro flash. Then I have 4 Cactus wireless flash triggers to the bottom right of the case.

I bought another cheaper case for my other bits and pieces such as batteries, filters, etc but I won’t show the pictures here.

Concluding Remarks

The CraftRight case is extremely sturdy and is pretty well made. I am happy with the protection the case gives to my gears. I hope this will help my fellow photographers in finding a good storage solution for our beloved gears. Happy shooting. Thanks for reading.